July 8

(0.0; 297.9 total, 1876.1 to go; -15.0 from pace, -152.1 overall)

I set my alarm for fairly early the next morning as I plan to walk into town to Welsh’s for breakfast. As it turns out, I wake up just as Dan and Leah are leaving to hit the trail again. After they leave I notice a 2008 thru-hiker’s companion left where they were staying; it’s probably theirs, so I put it with my stuff to deliver it to them further down the trail.

I walk about a mile in to town before getting picked up by the same guy as yesterday, who drives me the remaining half mile in. Breakfast is a big omelet; at Welsh’s I meet Sunday again (staying at a different hostel), as well as a different couple, Silver Potato and Cracker, who are eating breakfast and getting a mail drop before hitting the trail again. They ask what kind of stove I have, and when I note I have a canister stove Silver Potato asks if I need any fuel — their mail drops anticipated a greater burn rate than has actually happened. I’m still working on my second 15.9 ounce canister but was planning on getting more while in town, so we discuss a meeting location when I finish breakfast.

After breakfast I head to an outfitter nearly across the street to pick up those trekking poles I could have used so long ago. A random passerby from the Randolph Mountain Club explains the basics of trekking pole features; the available choices range from $80 to $140. I eventually decide to keep it simple and just get the most expensive ones, because I’m generally pretty thrifty and can’t think of a better way to spend it than here — I’ll be using these for at least another couple thousand-ish miles. I also grab a second stuff sack to help with carrying food; I don’t remember what I used before I got this new stuff sack.

Next stop is Colonial Comfort Inn where Silver Potato and Cracker had stayed the previous night. Silver Potato gives me two eight-ounce fuel canisters, which should at least be enough to get me through New Hampshire. Yay for free fuel! I’m also present as Cracker conclusively chooses her trail name (for managing to break one each of two pairs of hiking poles so far; they’re sending them home now to deal with possible warranties and such when the thru-hike finishes).

After making a phone call home, I head to the library for Internet access. The library in Gorham, as with every place I’ve visited, has a copy of Firefox running on it. What’s particularly interesting, however, is the bookmarks — the bookmarks in the bookmarks toolbar are:

• Firefox Help
• Firefox Support
• Plug-in FAQ

So this install dates back at least to Firefox 0.8 or 0.9, can’t remember the last release with those bookmarks — pretty unusual for a library with restricted use policies.

Speaking of restricted use policies, this library’s Internet is practically useless. I cannot access my blog (Reason for restriction: Forbidden Category “Games” — what the heck? It’s a single personal domain! The blacklist must be ridiculously comprehensive.), so I’m forced to write some of the immediate past trail updates in an email to myself via webmail. I also can’t access xkcd (Reason for restriction: Forbidden Category “Humor/Jokes” — at least this one makes sense). I cannot access Facebook (Reason for restriction: Administrative Custom List settings — so a prejudicial block), which isn’t really a huge deal. Internet security gurus will not be surprised to find that 0x000000 is blocked, as I suspected after images from an entry displayed by Google Reader didn’t load (Reason for restriction: Forbidden Category “Hacking/Proxy Avoidance Systems” — I am amused). Note how the last item demonstrates the considerable flaw in the apparent blacklisting setup they’ve got running here — there doesn’t seem to be any attempt to block content, so if you can get it another way you win. Lastly, while I don’t have any intention of doing any here, it seems this publicly funded library also forbids speech over the Internet in the form of political lobbying as well. (Aside: small-government enthusiasts will note that there would be no First Amendment concern here if this library weren’t publicly funded: a private library could set any access restrictions it wanted without raising any freedom-of-speech concerns. The First Amendment applies to state and federal governments, not to independently-operating private entities.) I don’t ask the librarians if there’s a way to disable the blocking, but when I mention the blocking being a pain they say they can’t do anything to override it. To top it all off, the connection is slow and flaky, and I can’t get images off my camera’s memory card and into permanent storage elsewhere because of it.

I spend rather more time at the library than I should making less progress than I’d like before heading out and back to the campground. On the way out I pass a northbounder, Bird, who’s in town from further south on the trail (possibly Pinkham Notch, I think); we talk for a little bit about various things before heading our separate ways.

Back at the campground I regroup for a trip to get supplies for the next section of hike. Tomorrow begins the anticipated White Mountains, consisting of roughly 100 miles of trail. Various roads cut through these national forests, so I don’t have to carry food for the entire trek, and furthermore, thru-hikers have the option to do a work-for-stay at a series of luxury shelters (in price, not amenities) in the mountains along the way. I decide to carry food for a roughly fifty-mile section to Crawford Notch, about five days of hiking. I get a ride in to Shaw’s, which is at the far end of town, to pick up food.

After the limited options in Monson and the relative smallness of the Stratton store, Shaw’s is paradise: rows and rows and rows of choices, much closer to what I expect after having grown up in suburbs of Detroit and having spent the last four years in Cambridge in Massachusetts. The choices are most obvious in the pouch tuna section: several choices, with seasoning and without, and a variety of other pouch meats as well, including salmon and crab! I cannot pass up the chance at crab, so I grab a pouch for one of my meals. Along with the usual Knorr fare I also try out Idahoan potatoes, as noted in another hiker’s meals earlier on the trail. Once groceries are completed I head a little further up the road, intending to hit a Wal-Mart (yet another verdant oasis on the trail) to get a new memory card for my camera. The current card was the original that came with the camera, and it’s painfully small: a pitiful 16MB for pictures and minimal video. I end up hitting a Radio Shack before getting there, and the new card I pick up means I’ll never have to worry about capacity again: 1GB of roomy goodness for pictures!

It’s now about dinnertime, so I head south back into Gorham to find a place to eat. I’m in the mood for Mexican, but Dan and Leah discouraged me from going to the Mexican restaurant (it apparently doesn’t serve free chips and salsa!), so I end up stopping at Mr. Pizza, this time for a sit-down meal. I attempt to satisfy some of my Mexican longings with a margarita, and I eat another Hawaiian pizza for the actual meal.

What’s truly memorable about the dinner, however, isn’t what I eat but rather what I watch: baseball! The Red Sox are hosting the Twins at Fenway, and when I come in it’s the top of the seventh and the Sox are down 4-1. The top ends and the bottom begins; the Sox score a run to take it to 4-2, but the Twins strike back in the top of the eighth to make it 5-2. The top ends and things start to get interesting: the Sox get a man on base, and a double puts him in to make it 5-3. Up to the plate comes Manny Ramirez (who I have since found out has been traded, alas — hope the results of the trade pan out), with a man on second. Manny takes the very first pitch and smashes a monster over the Monster and into the stands, and suddenly it’s a tie game! There’s still more inning to go, and the Sox get another run in to edge up to 6-5; the Twins can’t overcome in the top of the ninth, and we have a game. Awesome!

By now it’s nearly ten; I should sit in the parking lot and wait for someone heading south to leave so I can get a ride, but instead I start walking back to the campground, arriving some forty minutes later, just in time for a good night’s sleep. I’ve probably walked seven or so miles today around town (albeit without a pack) and I fall asleep pretty quickly.

July 9

(8.0; 305.9 total, 1868.1 to go; -7.0 from pace, -159.1 overall)

Back on the trail again today! First, however, I go into town (this time hitching the entire way — I’m saving my energy for hiking today, no unnecessary walking around town; I ask the campground owner about getting cheap bikes for use by hikers, and she says they had them until the insurance company complained — phooey) and eat another breakfast at Welsh’s; I then head to the post office to ship home more supplies I don’t need. This time the big item is a bear canister which everyone’s said I don’t need (the sites which have problems have adequate facilities to handle smellables) as the container, and inside I stuff a water bottle (I was carrying four, of which I only ever used two or three assuming on-the-go water refilling), trekking pole packaging, soap (licking clean plus boiling water is plenty for sanitation), a compass (the trail provides enough directional assistance, and besides, I don’t have a map with which to use it), and other assorted items I’ve since forgotten and rarely if ever used. That done, I grab a ride back to the campground, pack up my stuff, and hit the trail around noon with a northbounder named Ishmael (yes, he carries Moby Dick with him, as I recall) who’d arrived the previous day.

Today’s hike is going to be short since I’ve started so late; the question is how short. The first shelter is 1.9 miles in, and I cover it in 35 minutes. Is it the zero, my poles, breakfast, or something else? As I write in the shelter register, “Who cares!” (In retrospect that section was fairly flat, so it was probably that plus excess energy from breakfast; I’m also a little skeptical of that distance being accurate.) Jukebox catches up and passes me at the shelter from his stay in Gorham, and I continue on after a snack.

Much of the hiking today is fairly uneventful; the weather turns a bit inclement, but there’s nothing particularly memorable about the views. Still, since I have the pictures, I might as well post them. Here’s one last bit of video footage from a trailside overlook area:

Continuing on and up, it starts to rain. I pull out a rain coat and my pack cover and keep going to Imp Campsite, my first pay site in the Whites. I pull in around 19:30, pay the caretaker the fee, and head in to the shelter itself to make dinner and head to sleep. Compared to every other shelter I’ve used, this one is dead — I doubt I hear more than fifty words from the time I reach the shelter to when I go to sleep (including anything I said) because so many people are asleep or close to it, even though hushed voices really wouldn’t pose any problems.

July 10

(10.6; 316.5 total, 1857.5 to go; -4.4 from pace, -163.5 overall)

I get up in the morning and return to my traditional breakfast fare: oatmeal packets. These oatmeal packets are Shaws-brand, just as my first batch in the 100-Mile Wilderness was, and they have trivia questions on them. Strangely, today’s trivia has an error in it, giving “Irvin” Berlin as the author of my aunt’s favorite Christmas song, White Christmas. (I also hit an error on the last day in the 100-Mile Wilderness with a packet crediting Hank Aaron with the all-time home run record but forgot to mention it here; it passed to Barry Bonds fairly recently.) Another oddity: a fellow backpacker remarks upon my eating oatmeal from the packet after pouring in the requisite boiling water; I’d thought that trick was well-known backpacker folklore, but perhaps it isn’t in very rare cases.

The day commences with travels over three peaks named North, Middle, and South Carter Mountain. Early on I pass two girls in a tent off the trail at a stealth site (although to be honest it’s pretty un-stealthy; I’m surprised ridge runners haven’t managed to cite them, since they’re right next to the 0.25-mile radius around Imp where you can’t otherwise camp and aren’t the required 200 feet or so off the trail. Jukebox passes me on one of the peaks when I stop for a snack.

As usual, I also snag a few 360-degree videos:

Lunch is near Carter Dome, a rocky mountaintop with excellent views. I meet Limeonade and Emily doing a southbound thru-hike; Limeonade got her trail name from a botched blue hair-dyeing session, learning as so many MIT students learn that getting the color hair you want is easy to get wrong. There’s also a backpacker out enjoying the Whites who did a thru-hike in the past and a couple northbounders who talk about shelters south; apparently there’s one which is known as being capable of receiving pizza deliveries. 🙂

I continue on, doubling back to grab a water bottle that fell from my pack in an errant stumble (wasting probably half an hour doing so), and reach the trail to my first “hut” before 16:00.

In the Whites, huts are buildings administered by the AMC where you can stay overnight in bunks with provided sheets and blankets, get meals in the morning and at night, use bathroom facilities, stock up on drinkable water (a scarce resource, especially if as a day hiker you don’t carry water-purification options), and get minimal supplies (energy bars and the like). They’re also wicked expensive — upwards of $90 a night, targeted at day hikers and families. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would visit them at that price. Thru-hikers, however, do have an option which makes them useful beyond just temporary resupply and indoor snack-eating: work-for-stay. Under this system, some number of thru-hikers (the Companion says two or four, but experience says these numbers are lies) are allowed to stay overnight in the hut, on the floor in the common area, and get to eat dinner and breakfast leftovers, in exchange for an hour or so of work around the hut. It’s about the time when I could do a work-for-stay at Carter Notch Hut, but I decide to continue on and leave that open for Limeonade and Emily, who are nursing a sprained ankle and need it more. (Had I known of the two-is-a-lie rub I might have stopped, but it would have been a pretty short day, so I probably would have pushed on.)

Next up are the Wildcat Mountain peaks, of which I pass over peaks A and D (I don’t know where the others lie, except off-trail). I’m hoping to reach Pinkham Notch and camp off-trail to walk in for an all-you-can-eat breakfast the next morning, but the terrain stymies me, and I make it but half a mile or so past peak D and have to call it quits for the night. I move off-trail a ways to be regulation-legal (200 feet, but as I find in the morning it’s really only about half that, oops), set up, eat some Idahoan potatoes (amazing, competitive with Knorr in simplicity, weight, and calories), and sleep.

July 11

(10.3; 326.8 total, 1847.2 to go; -4.7 from pace, -168.2 overall)

I get a really late start today, far too late to eat that breakfast at Pinkham Notch, and descend the remaining miles to the visitor’s center.

As it turns out, I’ve been here before — this was the entry point for a weekend trip in the Whites toward Glen Boulder (not on the A.T.) during MITOC‘s winter school in 2007. I eat lunch, offload my accumulated trash, and head on.

I reach Osgood Tentsite around five or so in the evening, at the base of Mount Madison, after passing over a stream on a bridge which seems excessive after the sparseness of bridges over rivers in Maine (picture coming when I have time to insert it — and there they are).

There’s possibly still time to reach Madison Hut or a tentsite on a side trail near it, so I head on and up for an above-treeline summit. It’s up but not too steep until I reach treeline, and I make what I think is good time.

Once I hit treeline, however, the going slows. A lot. It’s not the exposure or incline but rather the stupid rocks there, and I have to pick my way carefully to avoid twisting an ankle. Fog starts rolling in as I head up, and there’s not a whole lot of view from the top. More impressively, however, is that I get within about 500 feet of the hut and treeline without even noticing it — a break in the fog as I happen to lift my head from staring at my feet reveals it to me at an impressively close distance.

I reach Madison Hut around 20:00. It’s late and I don’t really expect a work-for-stay, but I need their bathroom and figure I’d be kicking myself if it actually were available and I hadn’t asked, so I ask. Turns out they’re awesome and say, “Yeah, we won’t make you walk further tonight.” Whee! It’s past dinnertime, but they find some leftover pasta and pass me an approximately 9″x12″ cafeteria pan full of bowtie pasta with chunks of ham, along with a bowl and spoon. I fill the bowl and eat, idly chatting with people staying in the hut overnight. As it turns out, there’s another Waldo on the trail hiking north! (I seem to have passed him without knowing it, which isn’t especially hard to do.) Good thing I didn’t stick with that name, because it would have been mildly confusing, to say the least. I refill the bowl again, and again, and again, and eventually I manage to empty the entire pan — I really was hungry, I guess. There are a few other work-for-stayers, but I can only remember that one was named Applecore; all total there were about six or so of us when the limit is supposedly two.

Lights go out at 21:30 to conserve energy (the huts all have these goofy “going green at the huts” posters that make it out to be a save-the-planet notion, but I don’t doubt it’s also economically efficient — this is one place where wind power is a very viable source of energy), and people filter to bed shortly thereafter. I pull out my pad and bag and do a little reading of the Federalist Papers (I believe around No. 20 or so), quite appropriately as I’ve just passed over a mountain named for one of its authors, and go to sleep after topping it off with the usual Bible reading.

July 12

(7.0; 333.8 total, 1840.2 to go; -8.0 from pace, -176.2 overall)

I wake up early, around 5:30, to get out of the way of the crew at the hut (“croo” as they call it, for reasons which escape me) as they prepare for the overnighters’ breakfast. Now it’s time to sit tight and wait, because we thru-hikers eat after the paying visitors and croo do — living it on the cheap means you don’t necessarily get a high-quality experience. I do some more reading of the Federalist Papers while I wait. Breakfast consists of some oatmeal and a pancake or two; after that, I sweep out the dining area and both bunkrooms as my work and head out on the trail.

Today’s trail is more of the end of yesterday. I’m now in the Presidentials, a twenty-five mile stretch that’s all above treeline, with all the same frustrating rocks. Progress is slow as I approach the most well-known peak in the Whites, Mount Washington.

Mount Washington is the site of the world record for greatest wind speed (upwards of 230 miles per hour) and, as with Pike’s Peak in Colorado, can be reached either by cog rail or by driving up it on a road. The summit has a visitor’s center, gift shop, and all the usual tourist trap things, so I’m hardly going to be in wilderness on it (not to mention the throngs of day-hikers the huts enable, carrying packs that are way fuller than they should be to carry food and water for a day, warm clothing, and basically nothing else — my fellow thru-hikers wonder what they could possibly be carrying).

On the hike up I pass by the cog railway, best known to thru-hikers for a tradition known as mooning the cog; you can guess what it entails (I choose not to participate). The cog rail is belching an incredible amount of exhaust fumes, making a complete mockery of the “going green” poster at Madison Hut. Some would say the cog shouldn’t exist, but then you require that everyone agree with your assessment of the relative merits of the different ways to pollute, and it’s clear that’s never going to happen, for any assessment that could be made. Once again we see a situation where a fully equitable Pigovian tax which forced people to consider the full costs of their actions, including those which would otherwise be negative externalities not shouldered by the offenders, would result in a natural (and totally voluntary) decrease in an undesirable activity (polluting by riding the cog). Never heard of Pigovian taxes before? It’s too bad, because they’re a good policy idea that politicians are wary to touch for fear of not getting elected; instead we see inequitable and less efficient systems like cap-and-trade proposed simply because it’s easier to say “make someone else pay” than “everybody pay your fair share based wholly on your voluntary choices”.

On a mostly unrelated note, some of my Federalist Papers reading lately touches on the federal power of taxation, a contentious power in the days when the constitution was submitted for ratification by the states. No mention has yet been made of why the power to levy income taxes was not included in the constitution (no, really, we amended the constitution to make the income tax possible — go us!); exactly what the reasons were for this prohibition would be extremely interesting to read.

Further up near the summit I’m passed by the two hikers I started with, Slowpoke and Asgask. At the summit I stumble through the crowds to find a gift shop, from which I purchase a candy bar and several postcards, which I hastily fill out and leave at the post office (yes, the summit has a post office, with a “distinguished” postmark, or so I’m told) to be sent when the weekend end. After signing the hiker register I continue down to Lakes of the Clouds Hut, the highest and largest of the huts.

I arrive to the sounds of dinner starting; the impression I get is that the croo functions similar to that of a summer camp, so you get the usual skits and rah-rah-rah stuff as mild entertainment (which invariably here instructs you on how to fold the blanket they provide you as well as how to “tip the croo”, of course). Asgask and Slowpoke are there, as well as another southbounder, Cripple, as are two northbounders (Dee Jay and Gray Ghost, I believe), and I duck inside to inquire about work-for-stay, which is indeed available. I settle back to do more Federalist Papers reading until paying dinner ends. Once everything’s cleared away, dinner is served — turkey, cranberry sauce, some salad, and lentil soup. I get several bowls of lentil soup and, once everyone’s cleared out for the night, head to sleep sated.

July 13

(11.2; 345.0 total, 1829.0 to go; -3.8 from pace, -180.0 overall)

We’re up and out of the way of the croo at breakfast by 6, to sit back and wait for our scraps. Breakfast is more oatmeal, and after that we do our work (sweeping out the bunkrooms and changing pillowcases) and head out on the trail.

Today’s hiking gets me below treeline again, which is nice because it means camping options are more plentiful; I don’t know what non-thru-hikers do if they’re not getting scalped by the Appalachian Money Club at the huts, because the pickings are spare through here. The first stop below the trees today is Mizpah Spring Hut, where I stop for a snack. There are tent sites as well there, but it’s way too early to stop, and I continue on and over a couple more peaks, seeing what remains of The Old Man of the Mountain in the distance (a picture is, as always, forthcoming), and heading down the mountainside to Crawford Notch, reaching the road there by about 19:30.

I’ve planned this bit of hiking to have me resupply at Crawford Notch General Store just three miles up the road, so I sit down and put out the thumb. I wait nearly forty minutes before getting a ride, the longest wait yet, until I get a ride there just before it closes, in time for quick resupply for the rest of the Whites down to south of Mount Moosilauke. I’m staying at the attached campground for the night; there’s a new bunkhouse there for hikers, but I’m too late to get a spot in it for the night and it’s already full, so I pitch the tent adjacent to a northbounder named Thud in a hammock, cook and eat a dinner as it starts to rain, shower (although I’m not sure how much good a shower without doing laundry actually is), and head to sleep.

I’m finding I have less and less time when I stop off the trail to make these posts, and I’m stopping off less than I did early on now that I’ve adjusted to living on-trail all the time, so I’m most likely going to try to churn out a few days at a time rather than the longer sections I’ve been trying to do. For example, this bit was going to go to Glencliff just south of the Whites, but I ran out of time to do so and would rather get something out instead of punting getting anything out for another long period of time; I’ve punted getting anything out for too long.

Just so everyone’s aware of my current progress, I’m about 25 miles into the New Jersey section of the trail, but the trail dips back into New York for a little bit (it’s hugging the border mostly), so I’m in Unionville, NY at the moment. By my numbers I’m at 843.3 total, 1330.7 to go, -206.7 overall, an offset from pace which is worse than the latest numbers you see in this post but better than a nadir of -234.1 overall, hit partially due to an opportunity along the trail that I couldn’t bring myself to miss that required that I slow down slightly (or rather, not speed up too much) through August 1. More importantly, in the last two weeks of hiking I’ve only had three days below pace (one due to a thunderstorm as I was heading up a mountain and by only 0.6 at that, the other two which I intentionally made into an effective zero), and if you cut those out I made up about 40 miles on pace over that time, and some of those days felt (and were) easy due to restrictions on available campsites (the last several states only allow camping in designated sites, which curtails freedom in how far I can hike). I wish I had no deficit, but what I do have seems to be peeling away nicely, and 20+ days are easily and commonly in reach now.

Oh, if you were in MA/CT/NY and a little bit on either side of that between July 30 and August 17 and smelled something funny, it was probably me and my stench from not having taken a shower during that time.

July 3

(4.1; 250.5 total, 1923.5 to go; -10.9 from pace, -124.5 overall)

After a full breakfast of pancakes and an omelette at the store (it’s a diner as well as a general store), I get back on the trail, but not before being told that there’s a nice storm coming through in the afternoon and that it might be wise to consider my schedule once I’ve reached the first shelter.

The first big trail feature of the day is Moody Mountain; by Maine standards it’s not especially big (2440 feet), and it’s a reasonably nice hike up the side. By the time I arrive at Hall Mountain Lean-to on the other side it’s early afternoon and the rain hasn’t come; since it’s ten miles to the next lean-to, I decide to stop early and avoid getting wet.

Given the time, it’s not surprising that it takes a few hours for anyone else to show up. By the end of the day I share the shelter with three other people: Laserchuck (apparently it’s a sailing term, not associated with speediness) doing a northbound thru-hike, Sunday going southbound (I apparently just crossed his path back in Monson when he was laid up for a week due to injury), and a guy on his second day out doing a section hike north. Since it’s so early and I’ve got a little extra food due to the Andover layover, I cook and eat two dinners tonight.

Just as I’m heading to sleep, Sunday asks if he can have a match to light a cigar, and he and the guy whose name I don’t remember each smoke a cigar before going to sleep. It’s strange, but I’ve seen a fair number of hikers smoking on the trail; I wouldn’t have expected it given that smoking’s not particularly good for your lungs. There’s certainly much talk on the trail of stops at pubs and breweries in towns along the way; I recall once seeing wine juice boxes that look like they’d be awesome at the end of a day, perhaps in a short stretch between towns (water’s heavy and all). The big difference there is that alcohol, in moderation, is good for you and not actively harmful, but smoking, in any quantity, isn’t. Even weirder, I’ve seen a hiker or two rolling weed joints at the end of the day, which makes even less sense than a cigar, so I suppose it could be worse. (This was just after Monson, for what it’s worth; apparently he “resupplied” in Greenville, although how in the world you’d know where to find a resupply spot in a city you don’t know is beyond me. I really should have asked him when I had the chance — not to use said knowledge but rather just to know it for the pedagogical value, in the same way that when I enter a store with signs mentioning closed-circuit cameras I feel obligated to look and find them as if to scout out the best way to rob it. It’s all shades of this xkcd comic, really.)

I end the day, as I’ve nearly always (sans a night or two in hostels, to the best of my memory) done so far, reading a bit of the Bible I’ve carried with me. Typically I’ll read a few chapters before going to sleep; I started at the beginning of Romans and have been working my way forward from there (as of July 22 I’m in 2 Timothy, for what it’s worth). Sometimes, however, I’ll get sidetracked with something like Saul’s reign or something else; tonight it was the book of Ecclesiastes. (Yes, I did say “book” — it’s only eight or ten pages, not too long.) Having read it, I have to say it’s by far the weirdest passage in the Bible I’ve ever read. Anyone out there done any studying of it? I can’t imagine it’s possible to get too much out of it without having some sort of “guidebook” to help you through it and its content, to be honest.

July 4

(14.0; 264.5 total, 1909.5 to go; -1.0 from pace, -125.5 overall)

Whee! Fourth of July! Happy Independence Day!

I need to start writing these entries while I’m on the trail; it’s now (the 22nd) nearly three weeks since I actually finished this day, and things are starting to get hazy.

I get a relatively early and quick start out of the lean-to and head over to the next one, Frye Notch Lean-to, just over ten miles away. Along the way next to Wyman Pond I meet a sectionwise thru-hiker, Ol’ Graceful. He says he’s on his seventeenth year of section hiking and will complete the full thru-hike with this section. To be honest, I find this achievement in many ways more impressive than a one-shot thru-hike like I’m doing; consistently committing time every year for that long to doing sections is something I can’t imagine I’d be willing to do, to be honest. There are too many other things I’d want to do (cross-country bike trip, I’m looking at you!) for me to be likely to continue doing it year after year like that. There’s also the conditioning: getting in shape again every time you start has to make the hike far less fun than it would otherwise be.

I stop for lunch at Frye Notch as a couple is sitting there doing the same, heading north on a day hike. They say the climb ahead up Baldpate Mountain is fairly intense; at this point, as a thru-hiker, I’m not sure whether to believe them or not. Unfortunately, all my sources of information are suspect at this point. Northbounders are in far better shape than me, so their analysis doesn’t apply. Day hikers are an entirely different breed from backpackers. Section hikers are closest, but there aren’t that many of them out on the trail. I leave a nice 4th of July note in the register and encourage other hikers to read the Federalist Papers as I’ve slowly been doing along the trail. (I also mentioned that I’d be dropping my copy off somewhere along the trail when I finished it, but as it turns out I only just finished them before my thru-hike experience ended, so nobody else got to read my copy.)

As it turns out, the 3.5 miles to the next lean-to over the mountain are initially easy going, temporarily very difficult (right up a sheer rocky slope), a reasonable stroll down and over to the second of the mountain’s peaks, and another steep descent to the lean-to. Since it’s the 4th I consider making the shelter, packing up a few things, and heading back to the top of the second peak (1.6 miles round trip) to try to catch fireworks, but unfortunately the peak is wooded, and three miles to get to the top of the first, clear summit and back (in the dark!) is too far, so I stop.

Tonight’s shelter is where I finally meet Spanky, he of the long shelter register entries accompanied with Bible verses (Sunday referred to him as “preacher-man” once), website, and a fairly relaxed pace. Spanky did a southbound trek in ’02 as well (his home is near Springer, hence the direction), and he says he’s doing the hike and then living out the rest of his life with his wife. He’d get along with my mom well, because he talks quite a bit. (I’m not much of a conversationalist, but I’ll talk when there are other people around or they try to draw me into discussion, generally.) We see a snowshoe hare run across the clearing in front of the lean-to; I lust for a gun, a license, and hunting season. It appears it’ll just be the two of us for awhile, but eventually four or five northbounders walk in from Carlo Col, 16.5 miles south and just before the NH-ME border, and we share the shelter with them. One’s British and mentions having made an entry in the next shelter’s register noting “Happy Insurgency Day”, which I find moderately amusing.

July 5

(11.5; 276.0 total, 1898.0 to go; -3.5 from pace, -129.0 overall)

Today is the day that I finally meet that most vaunted adversary along the Appalachian Trail, Mahoosuc Notch. Some thru-hikers describe it as the most difficult mile on the entire trail; I have customarily reserved judgment and set no expectations regarding it.

Today is the first day of the trail where I’m not in Maine ATC land any more. Once I pass Maine 26, I enter AMC land. The Appalachian Mountain Club is old — older than the Appalachian Trail itself — and is probably most closely associated with the White Mountains. Today also marks the start of an abomination upon the trail: fee sites. The AMC is a non-profit organization, but frankly, from the way they operate, it’s not obvious. Most sites in the area of the trail they maintain have an overnight use fee of $8; even worse, camping is prohibited within a quarter mile of all such sites (to preserve the land, which is probably accurate but is a stunningly convenient excuse), and they require non-site camping to be off the trail by 200 feet, so you can’t just hike until you find a nice place to stop, generally.

The hike up to Speck Pond Shelter goes over a mountain to Speck Pond, the highest body of water in Maine. I pass two thru-hikers named Pickle and Garlic while doing so, one of whom has apparently just completed a Triple Crown due to having sectioned in Maine previously. The Triple Crown of hiking is the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail; if you think just the AT is insane, well, there are gradations of insanity. 🙂

I arrive in Speck Pond to catch up to Spanky, who says he’s stopping for the day. I’m still aiming to finish the Notch and get to the shelter on the other side of it, so I continue on. I’m starting to run low on trail snacks now, which isn’t good; I have plenty for meals, but a hiker can’t survive on just meals unless he’s willing to make very long breaks to cook meals on the trail — not good for hiking pace. Spanky gives me some of the food he’s carrying; it’s not trail food, but it’ll help, and oatmeal can be trail food in a pinch.

First, however, I have to hike down from Speck Pond to the bottom of the Notch; that hike goes slowly, as all descents do, and I finally decide that when I reach Gorham I’m going to get a set of hiking poles (really could have used them through Maine, but a bit late for that now). Finally, I reach the Notch.

Mahoosuc Notch is about a mile of ravine traveling over, under, and around house-sized boulders. It’s sheltered from the elements and contains scattered patches of ice/snow year-round, and the temperature’s easily twenty degrees lower than elsewhere. My pace slows quite a bit, and I have to plan my footing and route much, much more carefully than I usually do. I can see why they call it the most difficult mile, but frankly, after going through it, I don’t understand that sentiment. The only proper way to approach this is to budget a few hours and to look at it as rock-hopping through a giant’s playground; it’s absolutely a blast if you don’t care how little progress you’re actually making. Of all the miles of trail I’ve hiked, both on and off the Appalachian Trail (which at this point are of comparable magnitude, although probably not equal), this mile is by far the best mile of trail I’ve ever hiked. If you’re ever up in this area, give yourself a day to do it and hike through Mahoosuc Notch; you’ll be glad you did.

The Notch progresses slowly. Spanky apparently decided to move on, and he catches up to me perhaps halfway through the Notch. We pass by a dead moose carcass, which the AMC has chosen to leave there to let it decay naturally. It’s a very powerful odor, and between that and my route-finding skills taking me a bit away from it I end up not taking a picture of it.

Eventually, after many false finishes, we exit the Notch. It’s pretty late at this point — at least 7 or so — and there’s still a mile and a half to Full Goose Shelter. Spanky’s headlight broke in the 100-Mile Wilderness, and it’s only dusky, so I let him borrow mine as I carefully and slowly step up Fulling Mill Mountain.

We reach the top just as it gets dark, and as we only have one working light (and an underpowered one at that for night-hiking) between us, we stop atop the mountain for the night. I pull out a meal and eat; the stars are awesome tonight. Spanky raves about how he wanted to sleep atop a mountain in Maine and finally got the chance on his last night in Maine. We’re 5.4 miles from the border now, and I can’t wait to see the back side of Maine!

July 6

(15.0; 291.0 total, 1883.0 to go; 0.0 from pace, -129.0 overall)

I wake up around 6:30 or so to sunlight and dew; conveniently I’d put my sleeping bag inside my tent, used bivy-style on the rocks atop the mountain, so it’s not very wet. Sunlight dries things pretty well atop the rocks on the mountain, and I eat oatmeal for breakfast. A few northbounders — Topo, Cookie, and Kirby are the names I remember — pass us pretty early. Topo asks how many packets I eat a day; I’m currently at around two, and she says she and her companions are up to five now.

The morning progresses at about an average pace over a couple mountains. The trail to the top of one is pretty amusing, because, standing atop the highest point, I can clearly see the trail making a 30-degree bend to reach it — no taking the shortest path between two points around here! Trail snacks are now almost entirely depleted, and after passing the state line (NEW HAMPSHIRE!) I have to stop and cook a dinner for energy.

Another five miles down and I reach Gentian Pond Campsite, closely followed by a southbounder named Moose. He’s hiking with a girl named Duckie who apparently also attends or attended MIT (or maybe just lived in Boston? memory hazy), but she doesn’t catch up by the time I get there, and given my snack situation I want as short a trip into Gorham the next day as possible, so I continue on another 4.9 miles to Trident Col Tentsite after being given an energy bar by a hiker in the shelter. It’s a good thing, too — at this point I’m down to eating powdered hot chocolate dry for the energy. I leave Gentian at 19:30 or so, and it takes me until 22:30 to get to Trident, the last two hours of it in darkness save for my flashlight at a snail’s pace. Thankfully the blazes are pretty thick, so it’s not too hard to follow the path (although I do stumble about twenty feet down the trail to the tentsite without noticing until I look up to see a blue blaze rather than a white one). I make and eat dinner and fall asleep quickly, hoping to wake up and get into Gorham early.

July 7

(6.9; 297.9 total, 1876.1 to go; -8.1 from pace, -137.1 overall)

My plan to wake up early fails miserably, but at least I’m not sleepy. I eat a breakfast and a dinner as preparation for the walk in, still mostly snackless save for some hot chocolate packets, and hit the trail at 10:30.

I make reasonable progress down the trail and don’t hurt too much until the last few miles, when I’ve depleted my energy from breakfast and hot chocolate. The last miles really drag, and it’s a relief to finally hit US 2. My target for the day is White Birches Campground a mile and a half towards Gorham, which has a hiker bunkroom and some ability to shuttle into Gorham. I start walking, thinking to look for a reasonable place to sit and put out the thumb, when a white van stops and picks me up. Turns out the guy lives at the campground and drives hikers around a bit in his spare time. I get to the campground, drop my backpack inside, say hi to yet another hiking couple named Dan and Leah (from Texas or thereabouts, married since December, recent college graduates, were going to go as the Honeymooners but the name was taken and so just go by their real names), whose entries I’ve seen as I’ve hiked the trail, and get a shower. Once that’s completed, I get a ride in to a Shaw’s grocery store between Gorham and Berlin, where I pick up 1.75 quarts of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Ice cream containers have had horrible size deflation recently; I wanted a half gallon, but the only option for half gallons was Shaw’s ice cream, and they didn’t have mint chocolate chip, sadly. After eating that and reading several of the Federalist Papers, I order a pizza from Mr. Pizza in town, eat that, and head to sleep. The plan in the morning is to head into town, eat a breakfast at Welsh’s, hit up the library to write some updates, get hiking poles and fuel, and get groceries for the next leg of travel.

The biggest change going forward, now, is that unless I bivouac in non-site sites, I’m going to be paying camping fees when I stay at campsites. There are good reasons for the fees: they sometimes support a site caretaker, help defray the costs of dealing with human waste (privies aren’t all that cheap to operate in the middle of nowhere and often involve chartering a helicopter periodically), and advance other AMC goals. That said, nearly all the rest of the trail is free, so it comes as a bit of a slap in the face. Many thru-hikers are fairly antagonistic towards the AMC, and (speaking from outside AMC-land now) I can understand why, although I’ll probably talk more about that in the next update. Right now I’m in Hanover, NH (Dartmouth College land) heading into Vermont; I’m guessing my next stop with Internet access will be Rutland, but we’ll have to see, since I might not have time to take advantage of it.

On the topic of pictures, they’re still coming, but it’s a slow process. The problem is I have to upload them in bulk, usually, because individual pictures just takes too long. I’d prefer to self-host them as well, so no Flickr. Last, WordPress doesn’t seem to have a good way to use a picture already on the server within a post unless it’s previously been used by WordPress; I’d like to say “use this URL”, but I need the thumbnailing to save people some bandwidth (kinda, I’ve flouted that nicety in the last posts, but especially going forward now that I have the ability to take full-res images [more on that in the next update] it’s getting pretty size-heavy to do that). To top it off, uploading big huge files isn’t all that easy anyway; sometimes I don’t have an SFTP client to do it (the computers I’m using don’t always allow software installation), and the file size is too big for a CGI script to accept the upload. Expect pictures to come, but slowly. :-\

June 20

(0.0; 114.5 total, 2059.5 to go; -15.0 from pace, -65.5 overall)

Today is my first “zero” day: a day where I don’t do any hiking down the trail. Excepting a very few crazies, everyone takes zero days every so often, to give the body time to regenerate and the morale time to be uplifted. There’s also a related type of day colloquially called a near-o day, in which you hike only a few miles and then fiddle around the rest of the day burning time rather than Roming great distances down the trail. (I’m pretty sure I misspelled a word or two in that last sentence, but I can’t be bothered to go back and fix the mistakes.)

The day starts off with an “all-you-can-eat” breakfast at Shaw’s. The A.T. Thru-Hikers’ Companion uses the abbreviation AYCE for such spots, since they tend to be popular with famished hikers. Breakfast starts at 7 and goes until around 8ish, so it’s really all-you-can-eat-while-the-grill-runs-and-you’re-waiting-in-line; I miss the memo about the start time and head down near the end of it, but I get a good helping of food, to be sure.

I first stop off at the Monson library for some Internet access, which I mostly spend catching up on web feeds, dealing with scads of incoming email, and doing a little work on the first series of reports. I notice a decision has been made in Boumediene v. Bush but sadly don’t have time to read it; I think I agree with the decision at its highest level, but I’m concerned about how its practical effects will actually fall out — concern that must be substanceless without reading the opinion or any of the dissents to learn details. (I listened to the oral arguments, but the details were arcane and too reliant on having read the associated briefs, quite different from the argument in, say, D.C. v. Heller.) Finally, I forget to purge pictures from my camera before the library closes, hence why my pictures are Katahdin to Stratton and not to Monson. (The next two places where I have access it isn’t a library and there’s no nanny, so I’m not nearly as rushed to get the pictures off. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a monster memory card in Gorham, just the other side of the New Hampshire border, so the problem of storage never manifests itself again.)

Next, I hit up the Monson General Store; the Companion says it offers “long-term resupply”, but that’s something of a lie: it’s more like “long-term resupply, but options are limited”. (Had I been around I could have joined a caravan to Greenville for shopping at real stores, but I didn’t happen to be at Shaw’s when it left.) In particular they don’t sell peanuts, M&Ms, or raisins in reasonable bulk, so I am trail mix-less for the next stretch of trail. I continue in the tradition of Knorr dinners and try to scrounge up a bunch of granola bars and such for breakfast and snacking; lunches are tortillas with peanut butter and honey. Also, tuna in a pouch is nothing short of miraculous when added to some of the Knorr dinners. Last, I visit the post office to pick up a box in which to put stuff I don’t need; that overheavy pack cannot be tolerated.

I sort of combine lunch and dinner into one by eating a BBQ pork sandwich from Spring Creek BBQ in town. There’s a pub down the street which I consider visiting but eventually decide to be cheap; I’m not sure that was a great decision, in retrospect. The rest of the ice cream from yesterday tops off the day.

That done, I proceed to packing. Among the things I drop are a third set of hiking clothes (leaving two sets, one of which is for use after I shower in towns I visit, plus fleece pants and sweater for cold-weather use), bowl and cup (titanium conducts heat extremely quickly — you can drink boiling water straight from the pot with a little care, so the cup is superfluous) and an extra spoon, and a pack towel intended for use in towns. I’ve probably forgotten a thing or two, but that’s about the gist of it, all total about four pounds dropt. Food packs up easily enough too, and newly-clean clothing rounds things out. On the porch other thru-hikers are fashioning alcohol stoves from pop cans for the first time; they’re welcome to it, but I’ll take known-working options over untested options when doing a thru-hike.

It continues intermittently raining today while I’m going through town today, raising fears about fords and rivers down the trail. The immediate next fords are of the Piscataquis River, and a bit later is the Kennebec. The latter is billed as “the most formidable unbridged water-crossing on the Appalachian Trail” by the Companion, which ominously notes a thru-hiker drowned in 1985 trying to ford it. The current ferry service started the next year as I understand it; it’s basically a guy with a canoe and some life jackets, with set hours of operation depending on time of year. Anyway, the water’s so high on the Kennebec the ferry isn’t even running, which could be interesting later down the trail.

Coincidentally, I happen to be sitting in the lounge watching a game show run out of some guy’s cab (the “Cash Cab”), and one of the questions he asks some passenger-contestants is, “In which state can you go rafting on the Kennebec and Kennebunk Rivers?”

I share the hostel itself for the night with numerous other people: one guy admitted to Harvard but deferring for a year to hike the trail and do other stuff, along with a cousin from Britain; a couple who go by the trail name The Honeymooners (just got married a month ago); Dan, who has now adopted the trail name “Two-Liter” for his habit of using two-liter pop bottles to transport water on the trail; Casey, with whom I shared the Newhall lean-to several nights back; and two others just arriving that day. Speaking of trail names, I adopt one myself: Mercury, from the winged appearance of my boots when I wear socks encased in grocery bags within the boots in an attempt to dry them. (I’d previously half-heartedly used Waldo, but that didn’t seem very trail-namey as it wasn’t acquired on the trail itself.)

June 21

(22.0, really 9.9; 136.5 total, 2037.5 to go; +7.0 from pace, -58.5 overall)

The Piscataquis is unfordable, so we “yellow-blaze” just past the last ford of it, shaving 12.1 miles off the trail. Since it’s a weather-related shave I feel no guilt, although some will doubtless wait it out as purists. The mud returns, along with a spat of rain, and we hike over a small mountain and into the lean-to ridiculously early in the day. By my watch the ten miles of hiking take five hours, so I sustain a two-mile-an-hour pace — madness! My first fuel canister finally runs out on dinner; I started with two 15.9oz canisters (one full, one full minus some small number of meals) not knowing how far they’d go, and I’ve been amazed to see how long it took to empty just one. We share Bald Mountain Brook Lean-to with essentially the same people from the hostel in Monson, minus Two-Liter and Lucky (who stayed at a different spot in town), who decide to take it easy since the Kennebec ferry’s out anyway. Discussions about the right to bear arms, habeas, Iraq, and other such fun topics fill out the night — the Brit provides a unique perspective on the former, which to a large extent doesn’t exist in Britain.

June 22

(14.7; 151.2 total, 2022.8 to go; -0.3 from pace, -58.8 overall)

Today’s a long but pretty easy day, past a Moxie Pond and over a mountain but otherwise fairly easy, if long. The others get out earlier than I do, planning to meet up at a takeout place with milk shakes in Caratunk. I go slower and end up arriving at U.S. 201 after 6, when the place closes; I head west intending to stay at a hostel listed in the Companion, but as it turns out, the place is closed. Perhaps I should have checked the errata before leaving Monson. A mile further up the road (two total) is Northern Outdoors Campground, so I grab a tent cabin (tarp on a stereotypical house skeleton, with a light, a screened door, and four beds with mattresses inside) there and eat a dinner at the accompanying brewpub — a BBQ burger with a pint of their home-brewed “Class V Stout”, which the table placard describes as their version of an English stout. I try that because it sounds essentially like a Guinness, and Guinness is good. It is, but the final verdict is that it’s not a Guinness.

June 23

(0.0; 151.2 total, 2022.8 to go; -15.0 from pace, -73.8 overall)

After a breakfast from my trail supplies, I head up to the brewpub to refill water bottles, access the Internet (mostly epic fail since their computer doesn’t allow USB hookups, so I can’t dump pictures), and inquire about a shuttle back to the trail. Turns out the time to ask for the shuttle was the previous night, but at two miles it’s not worth the hassle of seeing if they’re in a good mood, so I start walking. I arrive at the ferry point, 0.4 miles up the trail, at around 10:30 to find the ferryman there waiting to direct people accordingly. Ferry’s still out, but wonder of wonders, it’s set to resume the next day, so I decide to take an unplanned zero and wait it out. I hear a few horrendous stories about mad efforts to not wait — a $220 taxi fee for eight hikers, a river rafting trip for two others, the Honeymooners who exploit a local connection somehow to go around the river — and decide waiting is an easy choice.

I could head back to the campground, but I don’t have a good reason to spend the money to stay there when I have a tent that’ll work fine in the current nice weather, so I hike back up the trail half a mile to get out of the no-camping zone and set up. I do some reading (the famous Federalist Paper No. 10, accompanied by an unending mental chorus of, “but, but, parties!”) and sleeping, cook a trail dinner, and sleep.

June 24

(14.0; 165.2 total, 2008.8 to go; -1.0 from pace, -74.8 overall)

I wake up late in the morning since the ferry doesn’t start until 9, passed by Two-Liter (post office-bound to get a mail drop, then to the ferry) and Lucky (ferry-bound) as I pack up; their leisurely pace gets them to the Kennebec right on time. I arrive right at 9 to see the first crossing underway, with Lucky and the aspiring women’s record-setting trail hiker (to hike the entire trail — was averaging around 44 [!] miles a day last I heard) as passengers. An hour, a life jacket, a release form later, and I’m across the beast. Even now the water’s still pretty high — I have no idea how you’d actually ford sans ferry. The claim is you can do it by wrapping your pack in an inflated sleeping pad and floating/swimming it across, but that just seems like insanity of the first degree.

Hiking’s easy; I stop for lunch at the first lean-to after the crossing, but it’s too early in the day for a stop at only four miles. I instead continue another ten to West Carry Pond Lean-to, around a few lakes along the way, chased by something buzzy (fly? bee?) around one of them. I share the lean-to with Jukebox, a fellow southbounder, whose planned pace is 8 miles a day (for now, ramping up in later sections of trail) but who is doing much better in practice. He’s got a fire going, which I use to try to dry out my boots (they’re far enough back to prevent burning or melting that I’m not sure it does much).

June 25

(14.6; 179.8 total, 1994.2 to go; -0.4 from pace, -75.2 overall)

Jukebox is up and out early; I follow shortly thereafter. Today’s big feature is Bigelow Mountain near the end of the day. I notice while hiking today that my legs don’t really hurt, even very late in the day — I’m at the point where I’ve been out long enough that things stop aching to a large extent. You can imagine this happening when you’re on a week-long trip, but you never quite hit it in that little time. The ups and downs agitate the knees, ankles, feet, and perhaps a tight calf muscle or two, but otherwise the legs, hips, etc. are all in spiffy shape.

Hiking goes fine, but it’s getting late in the day when I top the first of two peaks of Bigelow. The lean-to I want to hit is past the second peak, and it’s late, and there’s Avery Memorial Campsite between the two peaks, so I call it a day there after filling up at a slow-dripping spring just before the site. This is high-elevation camping in fragile areas, so my only option is a tent platform, which doesn’t work well with a non-freestanding tent but which can be made to work, given enough effort — so I do. Dinner and sleep follow quickly.

June 26

(8.0; 187.8 total, 1986.2 to go; -7.0 from pace, -82.2 overall)

I’m up pretty late today, and not hitting the lean-to yesterday makes me decide to stop in Stratton just down the trail a bit for the night, rather than just for food as I’d intended. Since I don’t have a cell phone and Stratton is five miles away, this is my first true hitch into a town, after about twenty minutes of waiting (about average from what I hear). I get in, take a shower, buy food plus a half gallon of apple juice, two pounds of strawberries, a can of pineapple, six or so apples, and two cartons of yogurt for food while I’m in town, and unwind. The Honeymooners and Jukebox are also here for the night as well, and Jukebox is here a further day beyond that (at least). While Batman Begins plays in the background on the TV, I pack up my food, offload pictures from the camera, make some posts here, and then go to sleep for the night.

This section of trail was pretty quick and easy: nothing too big in terms of elevation, not too much food to carry, and the miles just flew by. Things get more interesting in the next section of trail. Pictures are still forthcoming on parts of the last update; it takes some effort on my part to get them into place, sadly. As before, I’ll notify here when I complete that work.

June 7

Today’s move-out day at MIT for graduating seniors, so I’m busy packing my stuff and deciding what should go with me on the trail. Everything else is getting shoved in the van the family brought up here, to be taken home and not touched quite possibly until I’m ready to get it in November, when I plan my thru-hike should end. I do that, see off the family, visit a graduation party, travel to REI for a few last-minute purchases, buy food for the first leg of the trip, do a last walk through the institvte, and hit the sack.

Today I make my first mistake, although I don’t know it at the time: I decide what to take without consulting a scale. I don’t yet know how bad this is, but all shall be revealed later.

June 8

I sleep a little later than I’d intended and don’t end up having time to make the bus I’d planned to make, but no worries: there’s another bus later in the day. I pack up everything, eat a few last bits of food I have lying around, and head to South Station for a bus to Medway, ME. Katahdin lies in Baxter State Park, and compared to much of the trail it’s a royal pain to deal with — you have to make reservations for sites, and it’s 17 or so miles from the nearest town of Millinocket.

The bus ride, which first goes to Bangor, ME and then transfers to a different bus from there to Medway, is uneventful. I spend the time sleeping and reading from the Federalist Papers (my only reading material on the trail save for a Bible). My plan at Medway is to call a taxi to go to a campground just past Millinocket, but Paul from the Appalachian Trail Lodge is there to give a ride and overnight shelter to two other hikers. That plus breakfast and a ride into Baxter is $70, which might seem steep but from what I’ve since heard is reasonably competitive. Convenience wins out, and I spend the night at the A.T. Lodge after getting a bowl of French onion soup at the associated restaurant. (Good soup, recommended if you’re there and it’s still around — apparently the stuff takes forever and a day to make, so its being around that late at night was fortuitous.)

June 9

(5.2; 5.2 total, 2168.8 to go; -9.8 from pace, -9.8 overall)

Rejoice! First day of hiking! After breakfast and a shuttle into the park, I hit the trail along with Toby and Eric, recent Penn State graduates. (I get the impression many if not most south-bounders right now are grads, to be honest.) We go up and down the mountain using daypacks borrowed from the ranger’s station (as do most thru-hikers); some crazies hike with a full pack, but nobody really recommends doing so, and the terrain involves enough bouldering it’s kind of insane.

The views from the top are pretty awesome, taken within minutes of each other:

And here I am next to the sign at the top:

Last, take a look at this brief 360-degree movie from atop Katahdin:

Once the summit is achieved, I return, set up camp, eat dinner, and sleep.

(Explanation of the secondary header here: (5.2; 5.2 total, 2168.8 to go; -9.8 from pace, -9.8 overall). 5.2 indicates I traveled 5.2 miles on the trail; 5.2 total indicates I’ve gone 5.2 miles from the northern terminus of the AT on the summit of Katahdin; 2168.8 to go is how many miles until the southern terminus on Springer Mountain; -9.8 from pace is how I did compared to the 15 mile per day pace I need to average, more or less, over the trail to complete it by November; -9.8 overall is how much further I’d need to be to be on that desired pace. All numbers are from the 2007 A.T. Thru-Hikers’ Companion, which is basically the same as the 2008 edition and the actual numbers when I hike the sections over the next several months. For the initial stages the pace is kind of a joke — terrain and condition coming in dictate that pretty much nobody’s consistently doing that sort of mileage for awhile. I’ll probably make it up further down the trail, and if not, there’s a little slack for start of November anyway — no worries yet.)

June 10

(0.0; 5.2 total, 2168.8 to go; -15.0 from pace, -24.8 overall)

My initial plan was to hike six miles to Katahdin Stream Campground in Baxter from the entrance yesterday, summit Katahdin today, and continue tomorrow, so I have an extra night of reservation to burn here. Since I fell a touch weird on an ankle yesterday on a descent, I decide to take it easy a day and do a day hike to Daicey Pond and back, 4.8 miles round-trip down the A.T. using a borrowed daypack again. On the way back I catch a moose in one of the lakes and get a picture, but my camera has very little storage space and it got punted later for other pictures. That and dinner make it a day.

June 11

(13.4; 18.6 total, 2155.4 to go; -1.6 from pace, -26.4 overall)

After breakfast, weighing my pack on the scale at the ranger station (58 pounds, sans three liters of water and one Nalgene — this is at least 10-15 pounds more than it should be now!), and filling those three bottles and adding iodine to purify them after time, I hit the trail. The going’s easy, but I hit the first river crossing, see a high-water trail, and take that instead — I’m off the trail and it’s only the second day of hiking! That trail leads me through a portion of the river that’s only about knee-deep — I switch shoes, make the crossing, and continue.

Near the end of the day I hit the park boundary, after which most campsites are once again free. A little down the road and I enter the 100 Mile Wilderness:

This stretch of trail is the longest stretch not passing by cities or well-used roads, or something like that. It’s supposed to be scary and all, but it’s really not that wilderness-y, actually — it’s just long and early (for us south-bounders; most hikers do the other way and have this when they’re already in good shape).

A few miles in I hit the first shelter (lean-to, in local parlance): Hurd Brook Lean-to. I end up sharing the place with three other hikers: another college grad named Dan, a chauffeur whose trail name is Lucky, and A.T. “Almost There” Dave.

Carving or writing things in lean-tos may be highly frowned upon, but of course that doesn’t stop people from doing it. This lean-to happens to have the following carved into it::

June 12

(11.5; 30.1 total, 2143.9 to go; -3.5 from pace, -29.9 overall)

I take my time getting up and out this morning, or maybe I don’t: I seem to have trouble getting up and out quickly in mornings. It doesn’t help that for this first part, I’m eating oatmeal for breakfast, and heating the water to make it is time-consuming. The hike today goes up and over a small mountain (hill, really, it’s only up at 1517 feet):

It then meanders next to a lake. I see a duck in the water but can’t get a camera out before it’s gone, and I think I scare a moose away when I’m hiking (big crashing noises heading away from me). The day goes slowly, and I get into Rainbow Stream Lean-to kind of late, sharing it with the same set of people. Out comes the raincoat to ward off bugs (June is black fly season in Maine, but for the most part it’s the mosquitoes that are the killers right now). This lean-to has a funky totem pole outside it:

June 13

(13.9; 44.0 total, 2130.0 to go; -1.1 from pace, -31.0 overall)

The day goes pretty well; I make Wadleigh Stream Lean-to, 8.1 miles up the trail, and decide it’s not far enough, so I head on to a campsite 5.8 miles further up. Along the way I encounter my first stretch of trail that’s underwater — it’s along a lake, and the water’s higher at this time of year. I cut a trail along the shore to avoid the water. About this time the mosquitoes descend in force, and I practically run the next several miles into Nahmakanta Stream Campsite (passing by the first northbounder I’ve seen, although I only learn this from reports of others), where I drop the pack, pace for a minute, grab the raincoat and don it, set up the tent and huddle inside it for an hour to wait for the bugs to go away. They do, I set up a little more and secure smellables from wandering rodents, and go to sleep. Lucky’s the only other person in the site; Dan stayed at the previous lean-to, and Dave pushed on a little further.

June 14

(7.8; 51.8 total, 2122.2 to go; -7.2 from pace, -38.2 overall)

Today I encounter the first civilization in the middle of the “wilderness”: White House Landing. Take a side trail off the AT and you hit a lake; blow an airhorn and Bill Ware jumps in a motorboat, runs over and picks you up, and takes you across to the Ware house (pun intended). Nearly anything you could want except long-term resupply is available here, but it’s not necessarily cheap — AT Dave and Lucky are both here, and Dave says he spent over $150 for a two-night stay. (Dan apparently stayed the night and showed up after I left.) I settle for what the Companion calls “Linda’s famous one-pound burger”, a cold pop, and some matches, which come to $13.60 total — a very reasonable price if you ask me, all things considered. I head back over after lunch and continue to Antlers Campsite to get some reasonable mileage and avoid paying for lodging at White House Landing. Bugs are a little annoying for dinner, but I have a nice night with the tent fly rolled back on my full-length mesh tent.

June 15

(16.0; 67.8 total, 2106.2 to go; +1.0 from pace, -37.2 overall)

Whee! First day in the black! (Am I the only person who never remembers whether red or black is good?)

First landmark today is Jo-Mary Road. If you set it up, you can get people to securely store your pre-packaged-up food along the road for you to pick up when you’re here. I stop for water and a snack break, staying long enough to see Lucky, AT Dave, and Dan at the same time. I’m also passed by a couple, Andrew and Jessica, married barely a month ago, who go by the name of The Honeymooners. When I get going again, I pass by Cooper Brook Falls Lean-to; I stop for another snack as it starts to rain; the shelter’s pretty full. It’s getting pretty late in the day when the couple peels off for an unofficial trailside tent site. I know I’m just short of East Branch Pleasant River (supposedly the first ford of the hike according to the Companion, but I barely have to get one boot wet), and just beyond that’s East Branch Lean-to, so I press on. Lucky’s there, and AT Dave and Dan show up after me.

Man, it feels good to have hiked better than my intended pace.

June 16

(10.8; 78.6 total, 2095.4 to go; -4.2 from pace, -41.4 overall)

The big attraction of the day is White Cap Mountain at 3650 feet. True to its name, the spectacular view from the top extends about 100 feet in front of me. The trail up is wicked steep; not much in the way of switchbacks at all. On the way down I encounter one tree that’s across the trail at just the right height to make it impossible to go over or under it; it’s the sort of thing I’d expect trail maintenance people to have removed. To add insult to injury, the other side has a white blaze on it (the trail’s marked with stripes of white paint, 2.5″x5.5″ or so, well enough that many thru-hikers don’t even carry maps; it’s really odd not carrying a map as I’ve chosen to do, because practically every “ten essentials” list includes maps of the area), almost as though they wanted to rub it in our faces. Better yet, it starts to rain, and I stumble into Carl A Newhall Lean-to half-soaked.

Here’s where it gets really fun, because the shelter’s full. There’s space for a tent, but I’m in no mood to set up a tent. As it happens, some amazing people backpacking with their dog (bowl and all) decide to de-shelter and use their tent, so I get a dry place to sleep and avoid needing the tent! Two further hikers who arrive after me also cram in, and we’ve got a cozy night all around. Since then I’ve slept in and out of lean-tos, but I’ve never minded so much one way or another as I did that night.

June 17

(11.9; 90.5 total, 2083.5 to go; -3.1 from pace, -44.5 overall)

We have our first real ford today, across the West Branch Pleasant River. There’s a ranger (or at least uniformed person) there, and I catch up to Dan just at the ford. It’s maybe mid-calf deep or so, and it’s mostly pretty simple.

Continuing on, we go up Chairback Mountain. I feel pretty good, so I pull out the stove and eat a dinner (something teriyaki-flavored, noodles maybe, with a package of tuna) even tho there’s more hike to do. I think I’m at the top of the mountain, but it’s really probably the “seat”; after dinner I have a nice stretch of bouldering, after which I hit a lean-to. There’s space, but I feel like pushing on to the next one — a mistake. It’s late but not dark, and I really should be stopping now, but I don’t.

Hiking goes okay, and I pull out a headlight when it gets too dark to see well. Problem is there’s fog out, so it’s not the greatest thing for visibility. I stop atop one of the mountains and even get in a sleeping bag, but eventually I’m convinced it’s too exposed (and a smattering of raindrops on my exposed bag help too), so I pack up and move on. Eventually I see a decent spot and set up my tent in the rain; it’s now nearly midnight, as I recall.

Today’s mileage is an educated guess, but it’s the best there is.

June 18

(8.9; 99.4 total, 2074.6 to go; -6.1 from pace, -50.6 overall)

Today goes slowly; I don’t pull out the stove to make breakfast, so I settle for dry oatmeal mixes with gulps of water. I also run out of trail mix, and my energy sags a bit.

I don’t know why, but I think about continuing five miles past Long Pond Stream Lean-to to the next one, across one named ford 0.8 miles up the trail. I see the ford, make two attempts, and declare failure. The water’s wicked deep — we’re talking waist-high or so, and I think knee level is about what boy scouts say is “too much” (there’s an interesting game in this, figuring out when Boy Scout over-safety can reasonably be broken, and when it can’t) — and the river’s choked from so much rain recently. I give up and return to Long Pond to see Dan, Lucky, and a northbounder named Crazy Diamond. This sets up an epic 15.1-mile day to reach Maine 15, which leads to Monson and the end of the 100-Mile Wilderness.

June 19

(15.1; 114.5 total, 2059.5 to go; +0.1 from pace, -50.5 overall)

If yesterday started slow, today was worse. At that lean-to I mentioned as a target yesterday, after hiking some very overgrown sections of trail (usable if you look at your feet, invisible if you look at eye level), I stop and cook two of the three remaining dinners I have and just sit there and eat. Without trail mix or a good breakfast (I don’t remember what I had, but it wasn’t more than an oatmeal or two), I’m dead. After the two dinners I feel much better, and I keep walking.

Remember that ford I attempted yesterday? With some people watching and helping, I make it across. The water’s maybe five inches shallower, thankfully, but still way above the level at which it’s really safe. I get the help of a hiking pole and continue on, changing shoes for the ford. However, more fords follow — and where I’d made a habit of changing shoes for fords before, I decided I’d had it — no more changing shoes for fords. (This clip from Network about sums up my attitude at that point; don’t ask me anything else about the movie, because I’ve never seen it before and have only seen that part via YouTube.) No more two-stepping around mud puddles, no more gingerly care around standing water, no nothing — just tromp right through (waring only roots, mud since it gets in boots, and unexposed stones that can turn an ankle). It was great fun! The remaining fords were pretty nice too, particularly once I got the hint that a good walking stick (plenty left on the shores) is essential for any non-trivial ford.

A bit more walking and I hit Maine 15; it’s 3.5 miles east to Monson, and since it’s raining, I figure if I start walking someone will stop and pick me up. (If I had a cell phone I could have called for someone at my destination in town, but I maintain that cell phones are a menace to society.) I don’t walk far before I encounter success; after a shower, I head over to the local gas station to pick up two sandwiches and a half-gallon of ice cream to eat (the sandwiches actually make a large enough dent that the ice cream doesn’t all disappear that night), after which point I kick up my feet and relax at Shaw’s Lodging in Monson. I plan to take a zero day here (no miles) to give the body time to recover a bit; also, it’s been so rainy that several rivers south of us are unfordably (and in one case un-ferryably!) high.

So far, if there’s been one word I’d use to describe Maine right now, it’s “swamp”. As I said mostly seriously to the ranger at the river crossing, there’s water about every hundred feet practically through here. On that last day I think I finally got over it, and from now on I think I’ve learned to live with wet boots.

I’m writing this in Stratton now; I could add another week’s worth of entries here, but I should get some sleep, and there’s no rush on these anyway. The big thing is to get images off my camera, which has anemic storage capacity; two-thirds of my hike so far I’ve been choosing which picture to punt every time I want to take a shot. They’re off now, but I don’t feel like spending the time to insert them here [edit: some images inserted, some left to go]; see either the archive of the images (I assume the images include dates for correlation with actual events but haven’t checked) or wait for me to insert them in this post; I’ll mention it in a future post when I’ve updated this one with pictures. And now all the pictures for this section are inserted, finally!